Reply to
a Bitter Man

Brief Note on the “Reply by the LCFI to the Resignation of Laurence Humphries from the Socialist Fight Group/LCFI”,
10.3.2015, www.thecommunists.net

Gerry Downing, leader of the British Socialist Fight (SF) grouplet, has published an embittered personal attack full of
slander against our British comrade Laurence Humphries. (1) Comrade Humphries has recently resigned from the SF group and joined the RCIT. He broke with the SF group because he rejects Downing’s
Stalinophile adaptions to Russian and Chinese imperialism as well as to the policy of the popular front. Equally he criticizes SF’s sectarianism towards left-reformist mass parties like SYRIZA
and its deliberate “self-ghettoization”, i.e. its organic failure to recruit workers and youth for years. (2)

Downing’s “reply” symbolizes the essence of his “Liaison Committee for the Fourth International”. Leaving aside the
never ending violation of grammar and style, it characteristically includes a first-person narrative despite the formal character of a statement of an international alliance with Brazilian,
Argentine and British comrades. To cover his lack of arguments, Downing spreads gossip about comrade Humphries’s political activities in the 1970s. He “bolsters” his accusations against us
(“capitulation to US imperialism”) by refusing to acknowledge our numerous extensive documents on all disputed issues. (3) It is not the first time nor will it be the last time that Downing
continually slanders comrades of the RCIT. (4) Well, everyone uses his strongest skills in a struggle.

To a certain degree, Gerry Downing’s bitterness is understandable, since he lost with the resignation of comrade Humphries 20%
of his grouplet. However, if Downing, pardon the “Liaison Committee for the Fourth International”, continues his adaption to pro-Eastern social-imperialism and popular-frontism, it won’t
be the last resignation.